Classroom blogging

After-school meetings are usually the last thing on my mind following a long day in the classroom. This last meeting, however, left me encouraged to keep on keepin' on. Just the other day we had scheduled a "tech fair" at our school, which is probably simpler than it sounds. It was really four teachers who had attended the IL-TCE conference back in February presenting some of what they learned to the rest of the faculty. Myself and one other faculty member presented Blogs & Wikis... and received some very positive feedback.

I've been working with our district's tech department to look into school-wide blogging for next year, and the response from this tech fair told me that a good deal of teachers would be willing to try blogging and are actually excited about the idea. I think the key is to get teachers to believe that blogging will, if not revolutionize, then streamline their ability to get and give feedback from students and parents. It has certainly saved a lot of extra paper in my classroom; I carry my laptop home some nights and that's it.

With Spring Break over and the kids already talking Summer, it's been a busy and tiring two weeks. The feedback from our teachers on this presentation, though, has me reinvigorated. I'm excited about getting this set up for next year and anxious to see how each classroom teacher will take this idea of classroom blogging and make it uniquely their own.

(I think I'll go order David Warlick's book now.)